East Germanic tribes

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The Germanic tribes referred to as East Germanic constitute a wave of migrants who may have moved from Scandinavia into the area between the Oder and Vistula rivers between 600 - 300 BC. Later they went to the south.

The east Germanic tribes, related to the North Germanic tribes, had migrated from Scandinavia into the region east of the Elbe (Vandals, Burgundians, Goths, Rugians and others).

Groups

Groups identified as East Germanic tribes include:

• Bastarnae
• Burgundians
• Goths
• Thervings
• Greuthungs
• Visigoths
• Ostrogoths
• Crimean Goths
• Rugians
• Scirii
• Vandals
• Gepids
• Heruli
• Lombards

Language

The East Germanic languages are contrasted with North and West Germanic. However, the East Germanic languages shared many characteristics with North Germanic, perhaps because of the later migration date.

All the East Germanic languages are extinct as living languages. However, there have been recent attempts by Germanic tribal polytheists to reconstruct a form of neo-Gothic as a common community language. This is primarily based on the academic publications of a small number of scholars who have studied what remains of the written records of the Gothic dialects within Italia, the Iberian peninsula, and old Anatolia. Whether their efforts will succeed has yet to be proven conclusively since the reconstruction of elder Germanic tribal belief systems is a rather young research field, dating by most accounts to the last quarter of the 19th century.

See also

• North Germanic tribes
• West Germanic tribes

Notes and references

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Last updated on Tuesday March 04, 2008 at 00:01:50 PST (GMT -0800)
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